The Supreme Court has given more time to the Central Government to give information related to the uploading of BS-4 vehicles on the vehicle portal after 31 March. A three-member bench headed by Justice Arun Mishra, taking a strict stand on the plea allowing the sale of vehicles, said, "Why should we pass an order for the withdrawal of such vehicles?" If the manufacturers were aware of its deadline, they should take it back. The bench adjourned the hearing for July 31, giving the government more time to file the affidavit.
"July 8 saw the Supreme Court withdraw the order that allowed for an additional 10 days to sell BS4 compliant vehicles after finding out that over 2.55 lakh vehicles were sold, against the 1.05 lakh vehicles that the Court had ordered."
The Court said it would all for registrations to hold good for those vehicles that were registered with the Government's VAHAN portal. As is, there are roughly 17 thousand vehicles that are not registered with the VAHAN DATABASE.
Senior advocate KV Viswanathan, appearing for the Federation of Automobile Dealers Association (FADA) in a brief hearing in the Supreme Court on Friday, pleaded with the bench, "Vehicle dealers still have BS4 vehicles which are not sold." So those vehicles should be allowed to be returned to the manufacturers so that the manufacturer can export those vehicles to another country.
He said that many countries in Africa allow BS-4 vehicles. To this, the bench said, why should we pass the order for this. Vehicle manufacturers were aware of the deadline for the sale of BS-4 vehicles.
Court Surprised, how the vehicles were sold in lockdown
In the last hearing, the Supreme Court had wondered how the sales of vehicles were so much during the lockdown that took place across the country due to Corona? The apex court had said that it would examine whether the transactions related to these sales were genuine or not. Is this transaction backdated? In fact, the Supreme Court was surprised to see vehicle sales figures.
The Supreme Court found that the lockdown was in across the country from March 25, so how did the sale of BS-4 vehicles during this period. For this reason, the court had withdrawn its March 27 order allowing the sale of the remaining BS-IV vehicles for 10 days after the lockdown was over.
A bench of Justices Arun Mishra, Justice Abdul Nazir and Justice Indira Banerjee said, "There cannot be two ways to sell a vehicle even during the lockdown and there is a grace period of 10 days after the lockdown is over." This would be against the sentiments of the court order.
The Supreme Court said, the vehicles for which the amount has been taken but have not been sold, will be treated as a dealer and the buyer will have to return the money. "We had allowed the sale after March 31 in view of the lockdown, but the figures that have come to us show that the vehicle sales during the lockdown were higher than during the period without a lockdown," the bench said.
The Court had directed the Government to provide data from its VAHAN portal regarding BS4 vehicles that are registered on the database after 31 March and will take a final decision after reviewing the facts on 31 July this year.
